That’s Out­ra­geous!

WORLD WIDE WEIRD

AT YOUR BID­DING If you’re in the mar­ket for a de­com­mis­sioned cop car or a mil­i­tary car­rier plane, look no fur­ther than GCSur­plus. ca, a Cana­dian gov­ern­ment web­site that auc­tions off Crown as­sets. The page’s ap­peal isn’t lim­ited to mil­i­tary buffs. When Cana­dian trav­ellers are un­able to pay im­port du­ties on pur­chases made abroad, wares may be seized and resold on­line. That’s how the po­lice wound up auc­tion­ing off Rolex watches and lacy lin­gerie. The most lux­u­ri­ous items, says the GCSur­plus pro­gram’s se­nior di­rec­tor, Sandi Wright, are of­ten ve­hi­cles con­fis­cated from drug lords and other con­victed felons. “If you find a BMW, Lam­borgh­ini or Maserati on our site,” she says, “chances are it’s part of the pro­ceeds of crime.”

COLD COM­FORT In 2015, while shov­el­ling his drive­way in Bos­ton af­ter a bl­iz­zard, Kyle War­ing, 28, de­cided to mon­e­tise his labour – by sell­ing the left­over snow to win­ter lovers in sun­nier parts of the US. In its first year, his in­ter­net busi­ness, Ship Snow Yo, hawked al­most 700 kilo­grams of the white stuff. For about US$150, buy­ers ­re­ceived a 5.5 kg pack­age of freshly shov­elled prod­uct. “Even if 10 or 15 per cent of it melts,” says War­ing, “you’re left with plenty for a snow­man.”

MACABRE ME­MEN­TOES Ev­ery few days, 26-year-old Nicola Heb­son ram­bles through Lan­cashire, UK, search­ing for road kill and other de­cay­ing spec­i­mens. It’s not a grisly hobby – it’s work. For the past five years, she’s run the on­line shop Dead Good Jew­ellery. Heb­son has sold more than 600 pieces, in­clud­ing ­pen­dants with in­sects en­cased in resin and amulets in which taxi­dermy pheas­ant or crow’s feet ex­tend from mounds of clay. “If I find some­thing dead, I feel that na­ture is of­fer­ing it up to me,” says Heb­son. “But I’d never kill any­thing to make jew­ellery. That seems un­nec­es­sar­ily mor­bid.”